Ektron Windows Service

Ektron provides a Windows Service to handle background processing functions. This section explains the service, including

functions it performs
how it propagates updates to the connection string and site path
where it resides in IIS and the file system
its activity log

This section also contains the following topics.

Functions performed by the Ektron Windows Service

Functions Performed by the Ektron Windows Service

The Ektron Windows Service performs the following processes.

Load Balancing Assets
Generating PDF Content
Bad Link Report
Publication of content scheduled to go live at a future time, and removal of content scheduled to expire. See Scheduling Content.
When a new metadata definition is created, the Windows service applies it to all content in the Ektron database. However, the metadata definition is only activated for the content when it is enabled for the content’s folder. See Also: Working with Metadata

In addition, the Ektron Windows Service propagates updates made to the database connection string or the site path in the web.config file. The service copies the new value to the data.config and sitedb.config files (respectively). These are located in C:\Program Files\Ektron\EktronWindowsservice40. Any Ektron components that reference these values can retrieve the current information from these files.

WARNING! Do not edit the data.config and sitedb.config files. They are dynamically generated by Ektron. If these files have incorrect values, edit the web.config file, which is used to generate them.

Changing the update time

Changing the Update Time

The update of the data.config and sitedb.config files occurs once a day at a time prescribed in the C:\Program Files\Ektron\EktronWindowsservice30\Ektron.ASM.EktronServices.exe.config file’s updateTime value. If desired, you can change this time.

Disabling PDF generation

Disabling PDF Generation

By default, PDF generation is enabled. To disable it within the Ektron Windows Services configuration file:

On the server to which you installed Ektron, open C:\Program Files\Ektron\EktronWindowsService40.
Open Ektron.ASM.EktronServices40.exe.config.
Find this line:
<add name="PdfFileRead" type="Ektron.ASM.EktronServices.PdfFileManagerRead.PdfFileManagerReadService, Ektron.ASM.EktronServices40" IntervalSeconds="101" Enabled="true" />
Set enabled to false.

Viewing the Ektron Windows Service

Viewing in IIS

The Windows Service starts automatically when Ektron is installed, and again whenever the server is restarted.

To see the status of the service, go to Computer Management > Services and Applications > Services.
Look for Ektron Windows Services. You can see its status in the Status column.

The Activity Log

The service has an Activity Log, which tracks all related events. To see it, go to Computer Management > System Tools > Event Viewer > Ektron Log.

To view detail for any event, double click it.

A common source of errors is that the service cannot find Ektron sites, because they have not been created yet, as shown in the sample below.

Viewing in the File System

On your file system, the Ektron Windows Service is located in C:\Program Files\Ektron\EktronWindowsservice40. Within that folder, the Ektron.ASM.EktronServices.exe.config file runs the Ektron Windows service.